The semiconductor manufacturing industry has experienced exponential growth over the last few decades. In the course of semiconductor evolution, functional density (i.e., the number of interconnected devices per chip area) has generally increased while geometry size (i.e., the smallest component or line that can be created using a fabrication process) has generally decreased. One advancement has been the development of semiconductor devices, such as transistors, employing metal gates insulated by materials having a high dielectric constant (κ). Such semiconductor devices have improved performance with decreased feature sizes, relative to traditional polysilicon gates insulated by silicon dioxide.